The word pickle is related to a similar-sounding Dutch word, pekel, meaning “brine.” In the 1400s, a pickle was a spicy sauce. Soon the word came to refer to the salty or acidic used to preserve foods, and later to the foods themselves preserved in it, such as pickled cucumbers. The old Dutch phrase in de pekel zitten literally means “to sit in the pickle brine.” The English phrase to be in a pickle used to mean “to be quite inebriated,” as in Shakespeare’s The Tempest (Bookshop|Amazon) where one character says to the other: I have been in such a pickle since I saw you last! meaning “I’ve been so drunk!” This is part of a complete episode.
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